Army of Bruce

An interview with Bruce Campbell

by Shaun Brady

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Published: Nov 5, 2008

interview

"Are you baffled at why I would make this goddamn movie?" asks Bruce Campbell. "You sound perplexed."

Any confusion in my voice comes more from the shaky cell-phone connection as Campbell road-trips his new movie, My Name Is Bruce. Someone unfamiliar with Campbell's self-deprecating humor and mock-abusive relationship with his often obsessive fans may wonder why any actor would choose to depict himself as a washed-up, egotistical B-movie hack.

"The character in the movie is basically how I would want to react to fans, not how I really do," says Campbell, who did a "Bruce pass" over Mark Verheiden's script, adding in-jokes for fans and upping the unsavory aspects of his own self-created image. "I get to hide, so if anybody calls me out for being an asshole I just blame it on the character."

Campbell developed this character over years of tours and appearances, which consist of him heckling and mocking the gawkers clutching action figures of Ash Williams, the hero of the Evil Dead series that made him a cult star, and sporting T-shirts from Bubba Ho-tep, in which he played a geriatric, mummy-fighting Elvis. His public persona is an exaggerated fusion of his own personality and the wisecracking, self-absorbed types he often plays.

"When you get a real jackass question, you can't help but throw it right back. It's human nature," Campbell says. "But you've got to relax these people, because they're very nervous. If I don't initiate conversation, it's not going to happen — their hands are in their pockets and they've got the thousand-yard stare. So by tormenting them, I loosen things up and get the questions flowing."

Campbell's relationship to his public is unique even in the realm of horror/sci-fi fandom. His references to "the fans" can sound like he's discussing a subspecies of human, one that it's become his burden to study. He turned the tables on them in his 2002 documentary Fanalysis, but obviously enjoys the give-and-take.

"It's very love/hate, but I mean that in a fun way," Campbell says. "I've got actor-friends who will never go to a convention; it's just the creepiest thing they can think of. But I feel like I can poke fun at fans because I actually interact with them. This movie was an opportunity to tweak that relationship and make it even more confusing and troubling."

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

See Sam Adams' review of My Name is Bruce.

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